Montclair State University history professor Zoë Burkholder will give a talk at Watchung Booksellers on January 26 at 7 p.m. about her recent book, Color in the Classroom: How American Schools Taught Race, 1900-1954 (New York: Oxford University Press).
The book examines the way that American schools have created and disseminated specific ideas about race over the course of the twentieth century. Dr. Burkholder questions what Americans learned about race and racial etiquette in the years leading up to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that ended racial segregation in public schools. Her book details how the way American teachers taught about race during this period changed dramatically during World War II.
Dr. Burkholder is an assistant professor of Educational Foundations at MSU. She received her Ph.D. in the History of Education at New York University, where she won numerous awards and fellowships including a post-doctoral research fellowship at the Charles Warren Center for American History at Harvard University in 2008-2009. She has published scholarly articles and commentaries in Harvard Educational Review, History of Education Quarterly, Teachers College Record, Anthropology News, Teaching Tolerance, and Education Week.
She lives in Montclair, New Jersey with her husband, Chris Matthews, an archaeologist at Hofstra University, and their two children who attend public school in Montclair.
“My book has been very well received so far,” said Dr. Burkholder in an email, “and I look forward to sharing it with folks in Montclair.”
